The Wizard in the Rye
by Om Nom Nom de Plume
Summary: A diary of Holden Caulfield's first month at Hogwarts. Why are all those kids in Gryffindor so phony? And more importantly, where do the snidgets go in winter?


Item 251 / Breck (Davin Reed is People)

The Wizard in the Rye: Holden Caulfield's Journal of His Month at Hogwarts

IF YOU REALLY want to know why I ended up at Hogwarts, well, that's a long story. I suppose you'll want to know why I'm not back at Whooton or Pencey first – I swear to God it's not that interesting. They were all phony anyway. Charming as hell, but phony bastards.

The people here, well, I don't even know. They fascinate the hell out of me, really. If you really want to know, it started when I got that letter in the mail: dear Holden Caulfield, you're a wizard – no kidding. Damn near killed me, I swear. It wasn't even a good looking envelope or anything, just this little square white one. They got a big bang out of that, my parents. They kept saying it wasn't funny, asking me who sent it. I told them I didn't know, but they didn't believe me. I really didn't know. Not until that guy crashed through my bedroom wall with a pink umbrella. That killed me, it really did.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" I asked him. "I was sleeping, for Chrissake!"

"Holden!" He yelled, right in my face and everything. "What're yer doin' greetin' a guest like that?"

He was practically ten feet tall, and really scruffy-like. You oughta have seen this guy's beard. It was practically like a bear on his chin. Like a chin-bear. No kidding.

"Listen," I said, "I don't care if you want to come breaking through my wall and all, hell, but if you're going to abuse my goddam hospitality--"

"Holden, yer comin' to Hogwarts! Yer a _wizard,_ Holden, didn't they tell yeh?"

"Of course they goddam told me," I said. I was getting pretty exasperated. "Are you waking me up at this goddam crazy hour just to talk about some phony letter?"

I guess he could tell I was angry as anything, because he tried to calm me down right away. He started telling me about how Hogwarts was this nice school for people with magical talents. Boy, what a hoot. He also talked about houses or something, but I wasn't really listening. It all sounded pretty phony to me, really.

After a while, my parents came in to figure out what the hell all the noise was about and, well, they got to talking with Hagrid. That was his name. Pretty stupid name, if you ask me. They got talking to Hagrid and realized that this boarding school was less expensive than Pencey. I don't know what the hell had gotten into them, but they decided for some reason that it would be fine for me to go with this scruffy man to this boarding school I'd never even heard of or anything. They're usually touchy about that stuff, but I guess they were damn near sick of me by then.

Anyway, this Hagrid, he took me to a joint called Diagon Alley. It's pretty swell, once you get past the fact that it's filled with some pretty depressing people. I swear to god that every goblin we met in that Gringotts place looked like someone had just killed his goddam puppy. Anyhow, we went and got a wand at that place called Ollivander's. That Ollivander guy, he was something else. He kept going around all these damn boxes and pulling them out and handing me little sticks to try. He kept telling me to have them around, but it took a whole crumby hour before anything happened. He kept saying the wand chooses the wizard. Well, it sure took its damn time.

The train ride to the school was something else. Let me tell you, I never saw so much funny stuff in one boxcar. I'm not kidding, that train was lousy with the weirdest bastards you ever saw. They all had toads, or owls, or pointy hats – it was funny as hell. The trouble was, that kind of stuff is fascinating to watch. I just kept staring at this one girl with a yellow tabby cat. She started giving me the eye back after a while, and I kept thinking I'd say something to her.

"Sorry, is something wrong?" she asked.

"That's a damn big cat," I said.

"Watch your language, would you?" she asked. Boy, what a lady. A _queen_, even. I wouldn't describe her as strictly beautiful, but she had a kind of charm. That's the problem with girls, they do one little funny thing like that and you fall half in love with them. Girls will drive you crazy that way, they really will.

I didn't even get to try anything on her after that, because some phony bastard stormed in and started herding us off the train. They call them prefects or something, but it's really just an excuse to be lousy to everybody. I can't stand people like that, I really can't. I tried to ask him stuff about the food at this Hogwarts place, but he was just so touchy. I wasn't going to have a conversation with him if he was going to be so goddam touchy about it.

Anyway, once we got into the Great Hall, it was sort of a castle. Boy, there were tons of kids there, all sitting in these funny robes. Quite amusing and everything. I wanted to find that girl and see if she was still carrying around that goddam cat, but before I could do anything, this real funny guy with a beard started making some kind of speech. I wasn't really paying attention, because I was watching these candles floating around above the all tables. That thrilled the hell out of me, really.

There was another person in robes up at the front making some kind of speech, but boy, I was too busy watching the ghosts to hear what was going on. There was one who had been a pretty nice-looking lady in her time, if you know what I mean. She was wearing this gray number – a real little butt-twitcher of a gown, no kidding.

"Caulfield, Holden!"

I looked up. I didn't know what the hell was going on, but one of those prefect phonies was coming after me, and before I knew it he had dragged me up to the front of the hall by the ear. All he did was sit me down on this stool – in front of all these kids and everything – and give me this dirty hat to put on. Then he kept looking at me – hell, everybody kept looking at me – like I was supposed to put it on or something. I wanted to get off that damn stool as fast as I could, so I went ahead and put it on. It was so goddam big, it just slid right down over my eyes.

"Hmm, let's see.." it said, right into my brain. I swear to God I'm not lying.

"For Chrissake, what the hell are you doing in my head?" I asked.

"Oh, would you be more civil?" it said. "Much too stubborn for Hufflepuff. You've got ambition, perhaps, but it's too misdirected to do you any good in Slytherin."

"If you don't get out of my brain right now, I'll--"

"Oh, behave! You never quite finish anything you start – Gryffindor would be no good for you. I guess it'll have to be RAVENCLAW!"

Boy, I took that hat off fast. If there's anything that annoys the hell out of me, it's talking hats. It didn't have to be so touchy about it either. I'm impatient with that kind of thing, I swear to God I am.

So that's where I ended up. Ravenclaw house is all right, I guess. It's not paradise, but the people aren't so lousy – better than those Gryffindor phonies, at least. The classes are pretty swell. We usually just do magic, which is a lot better than reading a bunch of phony books and writing essays about them. Not that I don't like books, but I never considered myself particularly literate, you see, and the ones they make you read at most schools are all the phony kind.

My favorite class, though, is Transfiguration. Beats the hell out of history, it really does. The teacher is really something else. They call her Professor McGonagall, and she's terrifying, really. I guess she's kind of an older woman, but she has a very strong personality. She really knows what the hell she's doing. You oughta see her when she's mad, because here's something kind of attractive about it. She has quite a lot of sex appeal too, if you really want to know.

That's all I'm going to tell you about. I could probably tell you about the other stuff I've done this month, but none of it is all that interesting. It's like other schools, really – lots of perverts and morons, and all those athletic Quidditch bastards stick together. That's all I feel like writing – I'm so damn sleepy all the sudden, I swear to God...


End file.
